Four years ago on Prince Street, a 19-year-old college student with hot pink hair was raped by boxcutter-wielding fiend, a stranger who’d stalked her by subway and pushed his way into her building.
Today, the woman bravely described her ordeal to a Manhattan rape jury in hopes of winning a conviction against the man whose DNA matches that left in the attack.
“Shhhhhh,” he kept telling her as he held the blade to her throat, she testified.
Eventually, “I just shut off,” the woman, who now lives in Germany, said tearfully, recounting the attack on the concrete floor of her building’s courtyard. “I kind of went somewhere else. I honestly couldn’t — my mind turned off or went somewhere else,” she said.
Andres Suarez, 30, was linked to the crime after his DNA was swabbed for the state database after a recent assault arrest, and it matched DNA left at the scene.
He kept his eyes glued on the woman as she testified against her. She returns for cross examination by defense lawyer Ralph Cherchian tomorrow.
“He may have gotten away that day, but he left his mark,” lead prosecutor Shannon Lucy told jurors in opening statements.
Suarez is charged with predatory sex assault, rape, and burglary.